How to Make Cool Pictures in Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop has essentially become a proprietary eponym for digital image manipulation and enhancement. It is the most well-known and widely used tool for working with digital photography for people whose experience ranges from novice to expert, but the first thing most people want to know when they first get the chance to use it is, "How do I make cool pictures?"
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
-
1
Open Photoshop and click "File" > "Open" in the control menu at the top of your screen. Locate and select the image you would like to work with. For beginners wishing to do any kind of cropping or cutting, high-contrast images are best.
-
2
Click on the "Image" menu and experiment with some of the options in the "Adjustments" drop-down menu. Here you can change your photo to black and white, adjust contrast levels, determine how and which specific colors appear, as well as a host of other things.
-
-
3
Click on the "Filter" menu and try out some of those options, as well. You can get a nice softening effect on your entire photo with a low-setting application of the Gaussian Blur tool, or you can make your entire photo look haunted by ghosts with a higher setting. With one click, you can convert your image into a stained glass window or a watercolor painting in the filters menu. To get a preview of what your image will look like with the filter applied, select "Filter" > "Filter Gallery."
-
4
Change normal, realistic colors into surreal ones by selecting "Select" > "Color Range" and sampling the color you want to replace with the "Eyedropper Tool" that appears on the canvass outside the dialogue box. Select the "Color" palette to the right of the canvass and choose a replacement color. You can change normal people into orange and green oompa-loompas quite easily.
-
5
Familiarize yourself with the cutting and cropping options provided by the lasso tools and the pen tools. With these, you can select a custom part of your image to apply effects, color, or any other change.
-
1
Tips & Warnings
Look around the Web at photo blogs or design sites to draw inspiration for your photo manipulation. There may be a combination of changes and effects you particularly like, with a tutorial on how to use them. Experimentation is the key to creating cool pictures in Photoshop.
